? At that instant Michu bent to his
wife's ear and whispered:--

"Go the house and ask to speak to the Comtesse de Cinq-Cygne; when you
see her beg her to speak to you alone. If no one can overhear you, say
to her: 'Mademoiselle, the lives of your two cousins are in danger, and
he who can explain the how and why is waiting to speak to you.' If
she seems afraid, if she distrusts you, add these words: 'They are
conspiring against the First Consul and the conspiracy is discovered.'
Don't give your name; they distrust us too much."

Marthe raised her face towards her husband and said:--

"Can it be that you serve them?"

"What if I do?" he said, frowning, taking her words as a reproach.

"You don't understand me," cried Marthe, seizing his large hand and
falling on her knees beside him as she kissed it and covered it with her
tears.

"Go, go, you shall cry later," he said, kissing her vehemently.

When he no longer heard her step his eyes filled with tears. He had
distrusted Marthe on account of her father's opinions; he had hidden the
secrets of his life from her; but the beauty of her simple nature had
suddenly appeared to him, just as the grandeur of his had, as suddenly,
revealed itself to her. Marthe had passed in a moment from the deep
humiliation caused by the degradation of the man whose name she bore,
to the exaltation given by a sense of his nobleness. The change was
instantaneous, without transition; it was enough to make her tremble.
She told him later that she went, as it were, through blood from the
pavilion to the edge of the forest, and there was lifted to heaven, in
a moment, among the angels. Michu, who had known he was not appreciated,
and who mistook his wife's grieved and melancholy manner for lack of
affection, and had left her to herself, living chiefly out of doors
and reserving all his tenderness for his boy, instantly understood the
meaning of her tears. She had cursed the part which her beauty and her
father's will had forced her to take; but now happiness, in the midst of
this great storm, played, with a beautiful flame like a vivid lightning
about them. And it was lightning! Each thought of the last ten years of
misconception, and they blamed themselves only. Michu stood motionless,
his elbow on his gun, his chin on his hand, lost in deep reverie. Such
a moment in a man's life makes him willing to accept the saddest moments
of a painful past.

Marthe, agitated by the same thoughts as th